Ever since Guillermo del Toro walked away from The Hobbit (which is now going to be directed by Peter Jackson) the question has been: what will he direct next? The man has no shortage of projects to choose from, having announced or been attached to a load of options over the past couple years. He appeared at the Saturn Awards and talked about nearly everything from At the Mountains of Madness to Frankenstein, though he stopped short of announcing what film he’ll actually make next. Read More »

Author Dean Koontz has penned a series of books presenting a revisionist take on Frankenstein, which places the monster in modern New Orleans and incorporates some elements from Poe and detective fiction. (Or: he’s partially penned a take, as the first book was co-written with Kevin J. Anderson and the second with Ed Gorman, though those credits don’t seem to be on current editions of the books.) Now the books may be used as raw material to spawn at least one feature. Read More »

One of BBC radio presenter Simon Mayo’s guests this week was Guillermo del Toro, and luckily for Guillermo, he came by on a Tuesday when Mayo’s oft-addled movie-reviewing sidekick Mark Kermode would be out of the way. While they were there to primarily discuss Del Toro’s vampire novel The Strain, Mayo did have a poke and probe into many of Guillermo’s upcoming movies, not least of all The Hobbit. After the break, details on his various cast confirmations, including Hugo Weaving as Elrond, and a good sackful of other del Toro updates, including details on why Hellboy 3 will very possibly not happen, the casting and make-up tests for Frankenstein, a potential TV version of The Strain and more.

I’m not sure Guillermo del Toro will ever get to make his big screen adaptation of Frankenstein. After the director tackles The Hobbit films, he will return to a dining room filled with overflowing plates of projects he has already committed to. And the fact of the matter is that this horror remake is probably one of the least interesting projects on his slate is a testament of the quality of films del Toro has in development. But that doesn’t stop me from geeking out when I read quotes (this one via ComingSoon) of del Toro teasing his version of the classic horror tale:

“I’m not doing ‘Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.’ I’m doing an adventure story that involves the creature. I cannot say much, but it’s not the central creation story, I’m not worried about that. The fact is I’ve been dreaming of doing a ‘Frankenstein’ movie since I was a child. The one thing I can promise is, compared to Kenneth Branagh, I will not appear shirtless in the movie!”

34-year-old illustrator/designer Tom Whalen has been creating geekarific fan art for the last few years. His original Star Wars posters (seen above) are reminiscent of Eric Tan’s work (which we’ve featured recently on the site). Click on the image above for a better look.

“I love those movies (the Star Wars trilogy) and had to pay homage to them!” Whalen told me before confirming that a Return of the Jedi poster is also planned, “complete with Slave Leia”.

The art is created using a mechanical pencil and adobe illustrator. Whalen says his style is heavily inspired by Russian constructivist poster art, the design of Saul Bass, years of comic book collecting and his “unhealthy obsession with Japanese giant monster movies”.

“Like many others, I’m sick to death of tired photoshop montages passing as movie poster art!”

Whalen works as an editorial illustrator for a medical magazine. While experimenting with styles a few years back, he has come up with the graphic profile that’s been evolving ever since.

“I [was] inspired by the fantastic painted art that always accompanied horror movies and decided to translate some of those classic movies into my style.”

“My all-time favorite horror film is halloween… I may work up a full movie poster for that one once October rolls around!”

So what’s up next?

“I have a few commissions lined up right now and i’m creating a line of original faux movie posters for cinema-suicide… as well working as the biggest project of them all… a four-week old newborn!”

“I haven’t done any professional movie work, but it really is a dream of mine…”

Whalen sells some of his art at conventions and festivals, so if you’re looking on obtaining a print or have any commission work, contact Tom directly at tom@strongstuff.net. Or you can check out more of Tom’s creations on his DeviantArt profile or his portfolio blog StrongStuff.net.

Cool Stuff is a daily feature of slashfilm.com. Know of any geekarific creations or cool products which should be featured on Cool Stuff? E-Mail us at orfilms@gmail.com.

Residents of Middle-Earth should pop some Advil, as already-troubled New Line Cinema has been sued by the Tolkien estate, which seeks $150 million plus in damages in the mega-lawsuit. Peter Jackson‘s The Lord of the Rings trilogy did over $6 billion in world-wide receipts, but the estate claims that not a drop of gross profit participation has come its way. Moreover, the suit seeks further damages and, here’s the real killjoy, the right to take any other J.R.R. Tolkien works (i.e. The Hobbit films) elsewhere.

The estate released the following statement via its U.S. Counsel, Bonnie Eskenazi, practically writing the word “ludicrous” in the sky for all of the films’ and books’ fans to sigh at…

“New Line has brought new meaning to the phrase ‘creative accounting.’ I cannot imagine how on earth New Line will argue to a jury that these films could gross literally billions of dollars, and yet the creator’s heirs, who are entitled to a share of gross receipts, don’t get a penny.”

This huge “penny” hangs over last month’s once-optimistic news that fanboy favorite and Peter Jackson friend Guillermo del Toro was nearly a lock to direct both Hobbit flicks simultaneously. All of this after New Line and Peter Jackson settled their own notorious disagreement about boatloads of LOTR money back in December.

However, del Toro has more recently expressed doubt that the films are a sure thing, while playing up his multiple, rad spinning plates like Frankenstein, his H.P. Lovecraft pet project At the Mountains of Madness, and even Marvel’s Dr. Strange. What is going on over at New Line, I mean, really. This suit could not have come at a worse time, what with Business Week even suggesting that Warner Bros. fold the studio altogether.

In between threatening to show off his incredible “chocolate bar physique,” Hell Boy 2 director Guillermo del Toro revealed to MTV that he is working on preliminary sketches for an upcoming “definitive take” on the Frankenstein monster. Del Toro says that his vision, which is in the earliest stages of pre-production, will not be a literal adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel, rather a permutation on the myth. It’s all very cryptic, isn’t it? Does this mean he’ll be bringing Frankenstein into modern times or creating his own twisted Gothic fairy tale?

“The only way to do the Shelley novel is to actually do a four-hour miniseries,” he said. “But I think there permutations in which you can tell the myth in a different way.”

With Mark Romanek’s Wolf Man starring Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins due in 2009, it appears these traditional monsters of yore might be in for a more promising, hipper comeback compared to their last mediocre return to theaters in the early ’90s, when Mike Nichols’ Wolf, Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Kenneth Branagh’s Frankenstein put audiences to sleep, as well as the horror icons. Indeed, sounds like the perfect old school anecdote for what remains of the torture porn, ’80s remakes and Japanese remakes still haunting theaters.